Dispirited Spike Lee turns to television for work

Controversial black filmmaker Spike Lee has turned to television because he is finding it increasingly difficult to make a feature film.

“It’s hard to get a film made, my kind of film anyway, in Hollywood these days,” he tells USA Today.

“The movies that are getting made – sequels, action movies, silly comedies, comic-book movies – don’t suit me. I need a good story, interesting characters, complexities and some kind of unique point of view.”

Lee, whose films include Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X, said he has no feature film projects in mind at the moment.

Instead, he is making a film for the cable television network Showtime called Sucker Free City which examines the gangs in San Francisco from the perspectives of three young men – one white, one black and one Chinese.

“Shooting a movie for a cable channel like Showtime is like working on a feature,” he says.

“You’re free to do what you want. You’re not restricted in areas like language and violence.”